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Some Mid-Year Thoughts on Militarism and the Bush Administration

Most PRA readers know of the Bush Administration’s ideological split
between Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense and Gen. Colin Powell,
Secretary of State. Rumsfeld, a lifelong hawk, is eager to expand
the “War on Terror” by invading Iraq. Powell, though he is no dove,
is a pragmatic collaborationist and a Republican moderate who is reluctant
to counsel that the U.S. act unilaterally. The struggle between the two
for the soul of George W. Bush is the foreign policy story.

But we are currently seeing more than a struggle between hawks and doves
over invading Iraq. It is a struggle over the role of the United States
in the post-Cold War world. As the one country that dominates the world
stage – militarily, economically, and even socially – will the U.S. be
a benign manager of international conflict, playing a reactive role by
intervening when some “trouble spot” can no longer be left without an
international peacekeeping force? Or will the U.S. shape the world, preventing
the rise of a competitor nation, determining how nations are ruled, and
controlling who is allowed to exert international influence?

The Clinton Administration leaned toward the managerial role – intervening
when it seemed the U.S. would lose credibility with its allies if it
did not. When George W. Bush came into office, it was nearly impossible
to predict where he would fall on the foreign policy spectrum. He
had no foreign policy experience (or knowledge, it seemed). His reliance
on Condoleezza Rice, an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe, seemed more
consistent with his corporate ties than a true guide to his foreign policy
aspirations. During the presidential campaign, he promised to increase
the pay of military personnel, attacked the Clinton Administration’s
attention to military preparedness, and courted isolationists with talk
of “humility” and not getting involved “willy nilly” in foreign problems.
He said he would pursue only the “narrow interests” of the U.S. Some
columnists thought he would follow in his father’s footsteps internationally,
as a tough “manager” of foreign crises when absolutely necessary.

But Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney, his father’s Secretary of Defense,
as his Vice-Presidential running mate, and his subsequent appointment
of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary and Paul Wolfowitz as Assistant Secretary
at the Defense Department, combined with the events of September 11,
have opened the door for the new post-Cold War doctrine – a policy of
U.S. global domination. Bush’s hawkish defense team (many of whom are
former Reagan Cold Warriors) could not have created credibility for this
doctrine without the events of September 11. But the new doctrine,
in synergistic combination with September 11, seems to have opened public
opinion to the ultra-militaristic worldview in which the U.S. controls
the world by invading and overthrowing governments it deems a threat
to U.S. security. Colin Powell most likely will not be able to
stop this war train. In fact, both he and Condoleezza Rice seem
to be climbing aboard.

The new doctrine has been more than a decade in the making. As early
as 1990, when Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense, he saw the need for
a grand, strategic plan for the role of the U.S. in the post-Cold War
world and called for a quiet exploration of such a plan. Two strategies
were formulated: one by Colin Powell and a second by Paul Wolfowitz,
Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, and Eric Edelman, a senior foreign-policy
advisor to Cheney. Cheney was more receptive to the Wolfowitz plan,
but a discussion of its ideas was superseded by Kuwait’s invasion of
Iraq. When the Wolfowitz strategy was leaked to the press two years later,
it was characterized by reporters as envisioning a future in which the
U.S. blocked any other competitor nation from challenging its dominance
as the world’s single great power.

In 1997, concerned that Clinton Administration was not articulating
a coherent post-Cold War policy for the U.S. internationally, a think
tank called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) met quietly
to formulate a competing doctrine. The resulting 1997 document built
on the conclusions of Wolfowitz’s 1990 “think tank.” It called for the
U.S. to take its place in history as the dominant global force and achieve
greatness by being bold and purposeful. Signers of the statement of principles
included Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Elliot Abrams
of the Reagan State Department, who repeatedly misled Congress about
the abuses of the Salvadoran military during the Contra War in Central
America, Jeb Bush, and Frank Gaffney, president of the right-wing Center
for Security Policy.

Now, in the second year of Bush’s presidency, a little-known group called
the Defense Policy Board, a shadowy military/foreign policy think tank,
is promoting the same doctrine inside the Pentagon. Appointed by Secretary
Rumsfeld, its members report to Douglas Feith, Undersecretary of Defense
for Policy and yet another former official of the Reagan Defense Department.
The informal nature of the Defense Policy Board gives the Pentagon plausible
deniability, but high-level Pentagon officials brief its members frequently. The
Board is chaired by Richard Perle, Assistant Secretary of Defense in
the Reagan Administration, and its members include hard-right conservatives
of the Wolfowitz/Cheney school: former CIA head James Woolsey, Daniel
Pipes, an author and columnist who accuses Muslims in the U.S. of wanting
to establish Islamic law here, and former right-wing politicians such
as Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle.

One component of the new doctrine is the idea of “limited sovereignty,” which
asserts that a country only enjoys sovereignty if those governing it
do not harbor or aid terrorists. Thus, soon after September 11, the Defense
Policy Board dispatched James Woolsey to England to search out a connection
between 9/11 and Iraq. Another component if the doctrine is that when
the U.S. decides to act militarily, it will assemble “a coalition of
the willing.” That is, those who are with us are welcome to join;
those who are not are of no consequence.

Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, Frank Gaffney, James
Woolsey, and William Bennett, former Secretary of Education in the Reagan
Administration, all play prominent roles in domestic suppression of criticism
of the War on Terrorism. A group founded by Lynne Cheney, the American
Council of Trustees and Alumni, recently released a report titled “Defending
Civilization.” It listed 127 “unpatriotic” statements made on U.S.
college campuses since September 11. William Bennett created a
new organization known as Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT)
to “take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand
the nature of the war we are facing,” blasting those who are “attempting
to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of ‘blame American
First.’” Such individuals include former President Jimmy Carter and Lewis
Lapham, editor of Harper’s magazine. AVOT board members include Frank
Gaffney and James Woolsey.

Bush Administration foreign and military policy looks alarmingly disorganized
at the moment. Embarrassments such as the short-lived coup in Venezuela,
in which the Reagan Administration contra operative Otto Reich, now at
the Bush State Department, was complicit, give the impression of an administration
that does not have a coherent plan. More accurately, the foreign
policy doctrine gaining ascendance inside the administration is frighteningly
coherent. But it can be stopped if public opinion strongly opposes
it. Mobilizing that opposition public opinion is crucially important
work in the coming six months. In the short term, opposing an invasion
of Iraq may be the most urgent task.